How to Become a Better Public Speaker

Public
speaking has become a larger part of our life and we do have a lot of problems
in speaking in public. Public speaking skill comes from over years through
practice and I want to impart some of the knowledge that I have been able to
gain and want to share with you for become a better public speaker. Calm your
anxieties that you might get when you have to get onstage in front of a bunch
of people. So, in order to overcome these problems I have got some specific
public speaking methods that can definitely help you to become a better public
speaker.

Pay close
attention to your rate of speech

Most
inexperienced speakers when they are on stage tend to speak a lot more quickly
than they think they are speaking, and it is because when they are onstage they
have all this anxiety and keep all the materials upon their head and they are
just trying to get through it as quickly as possible because their main motive
is to get offstage as soon as possible where nobody is judging you. Always keep
in mind that the audience have sat there and have dedicated their time to
listen on what you are delivering. So, if you slow down and give them some
breathing room, then they are going to be able to contemplate what you have
said and more easily follow along with what you are talking about. Also, your
rate of speech isn’t the only thing you can control to make your speech better.
You can also employ strategic pauses to highlight certain points.

Pay
attention to your body language

Now another
thing which is to pay attention is, to your body language and this is very
important for two specific reasons. Your body language forms a large part of
the non-verbal communication that compliments the verbal communication of your
words. The way you hold yourself, the way you are poised, your posture, the way
you move your hands and gesture to highlight certain points. All these go
hand-in-hand with the words you are speaking and can help to compliment and
drive those points. But the other reason is that, the unconscious body language
that a lot of inexperienced speakers have is something that can harm your
public speaking.

Eye contact
with your entire audience

Consciously
try to improve your ability to make eye contact with your entire audience. But
the problem is that your entire audience are the people you are addressing. So
you want to make sure you are trying to make eye contact with each and every
single person during your speech. It can be difficult to make eye contact when
you are already nervous about being on stage.So, you can employ a classic
speaker’s tricks, which is to simply look over the heads of the people in the
back row, who are far enough away that they probably won’t be able to tell that
you are not directly looking at them. So, next time when you have to make a
speech and if you are feeling nervous and find it difficult to make eye
contact, I would strongly recommend you to at least try to make eye contact
with a couple of people throughout your talk, because this is something that
gets easier to do over time, and it will make you a bit more engaging,
effective, and more like human speaker.

Practice

Practice,
and when you think you have practiced all you could have potentially ever
practice, do it again. The idea here is not to practice your speech until you
get it right, but to practice your speech until you cannot get it wrong. And
this is because, mastery helps you to get you through any anxiety you are
feeling. And as we talked about anxiety, it can actually block your brain from
making connections. So, the more you concentrate on your material, the more
likely you are going to be able to get past through those anxiety blockers, get
the thoughts out of your brain, through your lips, and into the ears of the
eager audience. So, make sure you practice until you know your material because
practice makes a man perfect.

Do not
memorize your speech

Another
thing you should also keep in mind is that you should not write your speech
like an essay and try to memorize it from word to word. If you do that, you are
going to sound unnatural, you are going to sound like robots, or you are going
to sound like you are reading. But, instead you should write your speech in the
form of bullet points. List out the main points or any details and facts and
memorize those.

Record your
practice

It is also
related to practice, but it is a little bit of a technical improvement you can
make to your practice. When you practice, take a video camera with you and
record yourself. Watch the video and review each aspect of your performance,
and pick out the things that could be improved. This is a huge upgrade and in
just practicing for some times and watching over your mistakes and correcting
it, will make you aware of the things you are doing. Maybe you have a nervous
tick or maybe you are pacing too much. But the tape doesn’t lie. So, if you
record and watch that tape you see your mistakes and you can correct
accordingly and practice more effectively.

Know who
your audience

Realize the
people in your audience and they are most likely to fall into one of these two
categories. You might have the people who are rooting for you and they want to
see you succeed because they are interested in your topic, and these might be
your supporters or your fans. And on the other hand you might have the evil
people too. Who are going to laugh at you, and throw tomatoes and curse your
family for all eternity. Actually you have people who are bored and it is not
because of you, it is because their minds are elsewhere, they don’t want to be
there, they would rather be off doing something else, and whatever you do, if
you perform badly or perform really good it is not going to have much effect on
them at all.

Focus

Focus more
on the topic and less on the aspects of your performance, when you are
delivering your speech, and also you are preparing. Focus comes off the
nervousness of standing on stage, and addressing a bunch of people is placed on
what you know, and this is what you really want you to learn.

Haircut and
Dress

Don’t have a
stupid haircut. What I mean by that is, think about your appearance. Dress
well, and try to make a great first impression when you step on stage. This is
important because of the Halo Effect, which is also known as exaggerated
emotional coherence. And it is basically a term to explain the fact that humans
make split-second first impressions of people right when they meet them. What
happens is people use those first impressions to essentially fill in what they
don’t know about the person, and also make judgments about what comes next? So,
if you get on stage and you are dressed well and hold yourself well people will
be impressed with you and then they are more likely to forgive any mistakes you
make. And, they are also more likely to be receptive to whatever you are
saying. But if you don’t look good, then it is going to be a lot harder for you
to convince people of what you are talking about and those mistakes will be all
the more glaring. So, first impressions matter.

Take a
Breath

Don’t think
you need to be perfect. Focusing on perfection is the number one way to trip
yourself up, to give yourself massive amounts of anxiety, and to fail. Don’t
worry about being perfect, take a breath and just get on stage and deliver the
best speech that you can give.

Nobody gives
a perfect speech. Even if someone thinks that he gave a perfect speech, there
are people who can point out all the errors, and all the things he would have
done better. So, get on stage, focus on doing good, focus on improving over
your previous performance, and then just focus on your topic. Try to enact a
transformation in your audience and you are not going to care so much about
your nerves and your performance. So, these are the methods and I also have a
bonus tips and that is, to study people who are great public speakers. Watch
them and study their speeches and try to pinpoint exactly what they are doing.
Hopefully if these have helped you out or if you have any other techniques, you
can leave a comment below.

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